Paul Romer, the Nobel prize-winning World Bank economist says “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. Apple Inc has taken his words to heart and made three acquisitions this week.
First up is NextVR, a 11-year-old virtual reality company which streams sports and music. It is rumoured that Apple paid $100m for the deal; the company had raised $115m in funding.
Second is the AI start-up Voysis which aims “to decode users’ natural speech patterns”. Voysis was established in Ireland in 2012 and has raised $8m in funding.
Third is the weather app DarkSky which also supplies third-party developers with its forecasts. The DarkSky API is often the cheapest, so it’s been especially attractive to independent weather app developers.
Fast Company magazine sees Apple’s acquisition as bad news: “Apple isn’t merely shutting down the Android version of the app—it’s also planning to cut off other weather apps that rely on Dark Sky’s data, both on iOS and Android. When that happens at the end of 2021, independent weather apps such as Carrot, Weather Line, and Partly Sunny will no longer have access to inexpensive, hyperlocal weather forecasts.”
